I saw this attractive looking red okra in the vegetable section of the Indian store placed beside regular okra. Regular meaning the usual green colored kind. I had never cooked with red okra before and so thought hey, gotta give it a try. So I bought it, went home, washed, placed it very neatly in rows to dry on a kitchen towel. And then in the evening I proceeded to cook. I decided I'll start simple and make a good bhindi subzi, that's okra stir fry Indian style.
I chopped it all up, placed my nifty multi-purpose pan on the stove, did the whole spluttering of mustard and cumin, followed by stir frying some onion slices. And then very enthusiastically I threw in the beautiful red okra onto the pan. What the ....!! What transpired in front of my eyes was a rather disappointing vegetable tragedy. There have been a few vegetable tragedies in my cooking life that weren't this disappointing!
Within seconds of being in the hot pan, all that red okra had turned green! The very first thought that popped in my head was ugh, perhaps they just color green okra with red dye and sell it as red okra to trick gullible consumers like me. Then well I found out from the Goddess, err, Google, that red okra does in fact turn green upon cooking. Wow, now if only I had read this fun fact before. But I hadn't. Which is fine coz I experienced it for myself and that's great. Now I'm aware.
Turns out the only two red elements in my red okra stir fry were the tomato and the red onion.
It was of course delicious.
And that's why dear reader, red okra has been included in my list of deceptive vegetables. What are some deceptive veggies that you've cooked with?
